7 Awesome Ideas For ESL Stickers In English Lessons You Probably Never Thought Of!

Many teachers simply choose gold stars or exciting 3D stickers that don’t relate to the English curriculum, so there are few ways for students to use the stickers after they get them. But what if stickers could be used as an effective teaching resource like flashcards and worksheets? This is actually easy to achieve, but it requires choosing the right set of ESL stickers and using them the right way.

Since BINGOBONGO Learning has a complete, multi-level English curriculum with hundreds of lessons and thousands of worksheets, we decided to create a system that could incorporate ESL stickers into the English lesson plans. The system is called BINGOBONGO Sticktionaries, and it uses stickers with the same illustrations found in our FUN!books, worksheets, flashcards, posters and other popular English educational resources.

There are tons of great ESL stickers with the ABCs, numbers, verbs, shapes, and other topics in the universe, but it’s important to have a solid system to use them with.  BINGOBONGO Sticktionaries consist of 60 ESL stickers per topic and a series of laminated pages with a spot for each sticker. Getting stickers and finding where to put them on the Sticktionary card is a fun problem to solve, and it’s full of educational potential. Sticktionaries are also a convenient tool for teachers to use for warm-ups, conversation practice, grammar review, and even teaching new grammar and vocabulary through problem-based learning.

So, let’s go over the 7 awesome ideas to use ESL stickers in English lessons with BINGOBONGO Sticktionaries.

If students always get the same kind of stickers such as gold stars or whatever is sold at the dollar store (100 yen shop here in Japan), then they won’t be challenged to solve problems and learn. Instead, giving stickers of vocabulary words found in the curriculum to students in a random order challenges them to think about the words and find their correct locations on the Sticktionary cards.

Awesome Sticker Idea #3: Stick and repeat!

Another great thing about BINGOBONGO Sticktionaries is that there are multiple levels for each set of ESL stickers (ABC words, verbs, and more). The ABC Stickers can be used to teach new vocabulary, uppercase letters, lowercase letters, and even spelling. And the Verbs Stickers can be used to teach present tense, past tense, perfect tense and more.

Repetition is a powerful tool for reinforcing concepts and reviewing vocabulary which all young ESL/EFL learners will benefit from.

Awesome Sticker Idea #4: Start your lessons with stickers!

At our English conversation school in Japan, Step by Step Kids, we start our lessons with activities using Sticktionaries. Kids usually come to the classroom with a lot of energy and excitement, so giving them a sticker challenge right away helps get their English gears turning.

As soon as students walk in the classroom, the teacher collects their homework and checks to see that it’s complete. We also have an At-Home Challenge which is a great tool for incorporating Blended Learning with QR codes and the BINGOBONGO FUN!box. If the students complete their assignments, then they can sit down in class, choose three stickers on their own, and try to find the correct locations on their Sticktionary card.

This is a great way to start focusing on English right away. It also creates a challenge that helps review and learn new vocabulary. If students can’t find the correct locations for the stickers, then they can ask other students, utilizing peer-learning, or ask the teacher. It gives students an opportunity and motivation to communicate in English as soon as they walk in the classroom!

Awesome Sticker Idea #5: Use ESL stickers in your English lesson plans!

All levels of BINGOBONGO Sticktionaries have a target grammar section that can be applied to the ESL stickers for that level. These are great to use as a teaching tool in disguise since kids don’t think of stickers in the same way that they think about books or worksheets. You can easily practice counting, have a question and answer session, quiz students about the spelling of words, or even practice conjugating verbs and making example sentences depending on the Sticktionary level. And since all the students have different stickers on their Sticktionary cards, everyone can make unique English expressions based on their own cards.

Of course, you can do this with any kind of stickers, but if students are already familiar with the images from BINGOBONGO FUNbooks, worksheets, posters, and flashcards, that’s a huge added bonus!

Awesome Sticker Idea #6: A big reward at the end of the stickers!

But did you know there’s a much bigger reward hiding in the finished BINGOBONGO Sticktionaries? Since the stickers are put on a laminated page, they will last for years as a handy picture dictionary that kids can use over and over again.

For example, the Sticktionary series for verbs has four levels covering the present tense, the present participle form, past tense, and present perfect tense. So, whenever students need to look up a word they’ve previously collected the sticker for, they can just pull out their Sticktionary and look up the spelling or grammar points.

Awesome Sticker Idea #7: Play some games with stickers!

Does your sticker reward system have a short lifespan? Are you students getting stickers and losing them or, even worse, losing interest in them soon after? BINGOBONGO Sticktionaries give teachers a better system allowing stickers to become a powerful teaching resource as valuable as a textbook or flashcards.  The Sticktionaries are a fun EFL/ESL English tool that students, teachers, and even the lost, lonely stickers can get excited about.

If you want an effective sticker system that’s ready to go and will last for years and years, get your BINGOBONGO Stickers here, download the free BINGOBONGO Sticktionaries here, and get ready to start having some super sticker fun!